News blog

In Juli 2010 I spend days working my way through the APHIS database to get out all the information about GM tree releases - and adding the links to the database entries in order to be able to follow up on them.
The bad news is that sometime in August the USDA changed their database system and now all of these links are broken - the good news is that there is a new database with the information and it will be possible to turn all the old links into new ones, but we first need to write a script to do that automatically.
Until then you can still find the database entries if you add the permit number to the following urlhttp://www.isb.vt.edu/getRelDetail.aspx?bp=
to create a url like this:http://www.isb.vt.edu/getRelDetail.aspx?bp=10-007-102N

I looked at the map with all the trial locations, and realized that of course this map will just continuously fill up. Even if there would be a drastic decrease in the number of trials conducted, the map would still become fuller and fuller, because all locations were there once was a trial shows up. The map just doesn't make a difference between a - later abolished - trial in 1996/97 somewhere in Canada and an ongoing 15 year-trial only just starting now.

All the field trials up to 2009 are now included. 2010 is not online yet. Amazingly enough the data from the Canadian authorities gives even less information than the US data, and for 2009 not even the permit numbers are given. All in all, most research on GM trees done in Canda is by the Laurentian Forestry Centre (LFC) which is part of the Canadian Forest Service (CFS).

Many of the GM trees released are only vaguely described by genus or species, traits and notifier. So far we have dealt with that by having long titles including all of that in order to distinguish them from each other. All in all that doesn't make for accessible data. And also not all trials give permit numbers or similar.
One attempt to deal with this is to introduce our own numbering system, so that at least within the GM Tree Watch site we can access data easier.

What is GM Tree Watch and how can you contribute?

Releases of genetically modified trees are currently taking place on different locations around the world. Sometimes information is quite detailed, sometimes essential information (like traits, locations or even the name of the company responsible for the release) are protected as confidential business information (CBI). Some trees are just in one locations, others are released in numerous locations around the world.
The aim of this website is to bring all the available information together and to allow others to work from there. But this is also where we need your help: If you have any information - as sketchy as it may be - on a GM tree, a trial, a location etc. just add it either as a new submission or as comments on the page, and we will double check it and then work it in for you and others to use further in this bigger picture.
GM Tree Watch is a project by EcoNexus.

Featured trees, trials and locations

Five different GM poplars with reduced lignin production are released at two locations in Ghent (Belgium). Four of these GM trees have already been released before in France by INRA. The trees are intended for agrofuel (bio-ethanol) production. The goal of the trial is purely agronomic: an assessment of the reduced lignin production, without any environmental assessement.

Genetic modification

According to one of the notifiers of trials with plum C5, "plum hypocotyl slices were transformed with the coat protein (CP) gene of Plum pox virus (PPV-CP) following cocultivation with Agrobacterium tumefaciens containing the plasmid pGA482GG/PPV-CP-33. This binary vector carries the PPV-CP gene construct, as well as the chimeric neomycin phosphotransferase and beta-glucuronidase genes." (JRC 2007)